England and Other Stories by Graham Swift Page A

tightly and inseparably as possible. His father had become as puny and as nearly weightless as a boy. He’d seen for a moment that photo, the men with their stumps. And for a moment he’d seen too the map of India as it had once appeared in old school atlases, in the 1950s, blush-red and plumply dangling, not unlike some other familiar shape.

T RAGEDY , T RAGEDY
     
    ‘T RAGEDY , TRAGEDY ,’ Mick says. ‘Ever feel there’s too much tragedy about?’
    We’re in the canteen. Morning break. Mick has the paper spread, as usual, over the table. He peers at it through his half-rims. Two damp rings where our mugs have been.
    I thought: Now what?
    ‘Tragedy,’ he says. ‘When bad stuff happens, when people die. It’s always a tragedy, it’s tragic. That’s what the papers say. Tragic.’
    ‘Well, isn’t it?’ I say.
    He looks up at me, over the half-rims, and takes his usual pause.
    ‘When Ronnie Meadows had his heart attack on the fork-lift, was that tragic?’
    I have to take a little pause too.
    ‘Well—no,’ I say, wondering whether it’s the right answer. Whether it’s fair to Ronnie to say it wasn’t tragic.
    ‘Exactly,’ Mick says. ‘It was just Ronnie Meadows having a heart attack. But if Ronnie had died in, I don’t know, a train crash and it had been in the papers, they’d have called it tragic. See what I mean?’
    True. But it’s not as if they’d have mentioned Ronnie at all. I could see the word printed in the paper. I could see the headline: ‘Rail Crash Tragedy’. Not just ‘Rail Crash’. I couldn’t see the headline: ‘Ronnie Meadows Dies in Rail Crash Tragedy’.
    I was drumming on the edge of the table with my fingers.
    ‘So?’ I say.
    ‘Or if Ronnie hadn’t been a fork-lift driver, if he’d been, I don’t know, a Member of Parliament or someone on TV, and he’d died doing something just as boring—pushing a lawn-mower—they’d have called that tragic.’
    ‘So?’ I say again.
    I thought: Drink your tea, Micky, I’m gasping.
    ‘So. So it’s just a word. It’s just a word they use in the papers about things that get into the papers. It’s just a word they use because they can’t think of what else to say. It has to be tragic.’
    Mick likes to do this. He likes to read the paper—I mean not just look at it, but read it—and he likes to mouth off about whatever he’s reading to anyone he’s with. Which is me, Bob Lewis. But he likes to do it now specially, to make me suffer, now he’s trying to quit. I wanted him to finish his tea and fold up his paper so we could go outside for a smoke.
    ‘So it has no meaning?’ I say.
    I thought: Idiot, why encourage him?
    But I also thought it’s not true that no one called Ronnie’s death tragic. Mick wasn’t as close as I was, when the ambulance came. Ronnie’s wife had come too. She had to come. I’ve forgotten her name. Sandra? Sarah? And Mercer was there, in his white shirt, he had to be. He said, ‘It’s tragic, Mrs Meadows. Tragic . . . tragic.’ He said it several times. He looked like he didn’t know what else to say, and Ronnie’s wife looked like she wasn’t listening.
    Ronnie was still lying under a pallet cover, because it was technically an industrial accident and he couldn’t be moved yet. There was a pointy bit of the pallet cover that was Ronnie Meadows’ nose.
    Did Mick hear what Mercer said? As I remember it, he was hanging back a bit. It was over three months ago. Ronnie had to go and drop dead right in the middle of the yard where everyone crosses to get to the gate. Even for a smoke at break time. I saw people skirting round for days, weeks afterwards. I skirted round myself. Then one day I realised, same as everyone else: I’ve just walked over the spot where Ronnie Meadows died and never thought about it.
    But now I remembered Mercer saying ‘tragic’ to Ronnie’s wife.
    ‘Yes it has a meaning,’ Mick says. He takes a breath. I thought: Here we go. He could see me drumming my